


Love's Labours Delayed

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [40]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse (Web Series)
Genre: Incest, and its more accidental than anything, because like the bodies' owners do want it but the ride-along souls dont, possible dubcon, s6 e9: Dr Thunderfinger, well kind of because its only their souls and not really their bodies and also not really them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23061823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: When Bruno Hamilton is put into an avatar who is wholesomely in love with the avatar of his granddaughter, things don't turn out like he'd hoped
Relationships: Bruno Hamilton/Lori, Dick Ramsbottom/Jane Blonde
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Love's Labours Delayed

As the bright white light of the metaverse dissolved around him, Bruno blinked at the prison bars in front of his face.

Prison wasn’t the most unexpected place he’d ended up in when first jumping into an avatar, but it was a sub-optimal one. A swift survey of the room revealed that he wasn’t alone in said prison; two other people were bickering in cells nearby, and if he squinted he could just make out the halos of pilots around them.

Since, from what Bruno had seen, people mostly got dropped into avatars that matched their own gender, he felt safe in assuming that the blonde female was probably the avatar of Andi and the guy with the metal arm was probably Crash. They were, after all, the ones who’d gone into the pods at the same time he had and they were supposed to be entering this metaverse together, but both of them were deep enough in their avatars that Bruno couldn’t tell for absolute certain. The banter was certainly all the avatars; Crash had a reasonably solid grip on his brain-to-mouth filter, even if what he did end up saying didn’t always make the most sense, while this guy poured out every thought flitting through his head; the one he assumed to be Andi’s was British - or sounded like it, anyway - and seemed to be needling Crash’s avatar for the hell of it.

While they bickered, Bruno took the opportunity to stretch and get a feel for his avatar’s body. He was definitely shorter than usual, and much more wiry, but the most surprising part with the flexibility offered by every joint as he tested them. Elbows bending beyond 180, shoulders that rotated nearly out of joint to let hands clasp forearms behind his back, and hips that rotated easily enough that he was pretty certain he could do the splits if he cared to. Bruno had never been this bendy in his life; even before Africa he could lift several hundred pounds more than the average person, but even in his prime he would never have dreamed of bending far enough to get his own feet behind his head if he so desired.

He filed that flexibility away under useful information and returned to the conversation at hand.

The blonde woman - Jane Blonde, something in the back of his mind suggested and he very nearly snorted at the thought before putting it aside - was still sniping at the other man - Baron Bad? - so Bruno tuned back out to take a more thorough inventory of the cell he was nominally imprisoned in. A quick glance told him that while he was smaller and thinner than usual, the bars were still set sufficiently close together that squeezing through them wasn’t an option. The only bars not anchored in the floor and ceiling were the ones that comprised the door, which was locked securely. Said lock, on closer inspection, was a big 1960s mechanical affair that he could probably have picked with a paperclip if he’d had any. The lack of amenities put it a step or two below several prisons he’d been the unwilling guest of in the past, but the rotting corpses in several of the cells nearby were nearly par for the course.

As far as outside the cell went, the room was much longer than it was tall or wide as near as Bruno could tell. The cells marched down the sides away from a large steel door and seemed largely unused save for the six currently occupied by bodies. The steel door was the only entrance or exit he could see, though the fact that the place lacked windows and still managed a breeze suggested there were air circulation vents concealed somewhere; likely close to the roof, to make it as difficult as possible to use them for anything while guaranteeing any heavier-than-air elements introduced that way would reach maximum dispersal in minimum time.

“Look at that, Ramsbottom being remarkably attentive. Didn’t notice the roofie in his drink when he tried to seduce Blonde, but. Still.” The rather pointed remark made in his direction by the heavily-accented voice of Bad pulled Bruno from his evaluation and he glanced over at the other man. Taller than his own avatar with greasy black hair and the pallor of someone who spent far too much time inside hunched over cathode-ray tubes, the most immediately arresting feature of the Baron was his metal arm. Given the jerkiness to its movements and the audible grind of servos inside the thing, Bruno wasn’t overly concerned if it came to having to manhandle the Baron along in their escape until Crash chose to exert himself. Additionally, he now had at least part of the name of his own avatar: Ramsbottom. 

Apparently that had been all the Baron wanted to say about him because the man immediately went back to commenting on Blonde’s hair, of all irrelevant things. Bruno shrugged mentally and grabbed the bar to which the locking mechanism was attached. The thing about locks is that while they tended to be reasonably well-fortified in their own right, they were really only as secure as what they were attached to. An experimental tug was enough to confirm that Bruno’s own strength, used through his avatar, would be more than sufficient to pull the lock and its bolt enough out of position to allow him to get the door open.

He _pulled_.

“Oh hey, that’s good thinking, Dick, maybe if you - oh shit, it’s working. That’s cool.” Bruno flexed his hands as he stepped through the ruined remains of the door. The part of the mechanism attached to the door hung uselessly in midair, the hinges of the door itself creaking slightly. It’d taken a bit of doing, but the residual ache in his hands was already fading even as Blonde pushed open her own door and stepped out. From the look of the door behind her, she’d managed to conceal a cutting torch somewhere on her person. 

“Well done Dick,” she said, a sparkle in her eyes and a smirk on her lips. Bruno smiled back politely, but refused to acknowledge the unspoken warmth in her gaze. Whatever was going on between his avatar and Blonde, it was neither the time nor place for it and he’d already had the unpleasant experience of one avatar lusting after his granddaughter while he was piloting; he’d prefer to avoid another such experience if could reasonably manage it.

“Dick, if I was have known that you could do that, I would have hired you for something other than shagging good guys. That’s - Wow!”

“I’m a man of many talents,” Bruno responded dryly, deciding to take the Baron’s words at face value. The guy’s accent was thicker than several planks, but beyond that he tended to speak very plainly. What he said was what he meant, even if it sounded like his brain didn’t always stop it to sense-check it first.

“And that strength extends aaaaall the way down.” There was a pleased satisfaction in Blonde’s tone that Bruno didn’t want to think about.

“Wow - Oh! Oh, I see what you did there. That was innuendo for the time that, that you two did, uh, did the dirty deed. Which, I am still not sure what it is, but.” Bad’s rambling continued, accompanied by frankly obscene hand gestures, and Bruno shook his head as he went to go destroy the Baron’s door as efficiently as he’d broken his own. For all that the Baron had been offering to fight them both to the death earlier, Bruno didn’t think it was a good idea to leave him in the cell. For one, the Baron probably had at a least a vague idea about what they were facing and for another Crash was the one who’d insisted they come to this metaverse in the first place; leaving the person who was _probably_ his avatar behind seemed counterproductive.

“Please don’t disillusion him, he still thinks it was _beautiful_.” Blonde’s voice rang out behind him and Bruno couldn’t resist the urge to shake his head as he yanked the bars apart on Bad’s cell perhaps a tad harder than was really warranted. Sometimes the enhanced strength granted to him by his time in the metaverse still surprised him; he’d accidentally crushed a few (unfortunately full) cans back on Arena by gripping them too hard, and Zenda had castigated him on the waste of food.

Not that canned bread really constituted food, but that was beside the point.

“Is that true Dick?” The Baron’s eyes were gormless in their staring at Jane Blonde, who had taken the opportunity presented by being free to inspect her nails for damage. “You know she used you, right?”

His tone was more bewildered than anything, and Bruno shrugged physically and verbally. “We’re all using each other,” he responded blandly and resolutely ignored the resultant giggles from the direction of Blonde as he pulled the cell door open.

The Baron continued to chatter even as he stepped out through the newly-opened door, and from behind Bruno there came the tiniest huff of annoyance. Turning, he met the reproachful eyes of Jane Blonde, who looked more than a little peeved that someone who claimed to be her greatest nemesis was being let out of the jail cell he’d been locked in. Normally Bruno would agree that bad guys belonged behind bars, but this was something of a special case considering the rest of his team was supposed to be in these two with him.

“Now why’d you have to go and do that, Dickie? That was our chance! We could have left him behind.” The pout reminded him strongly of the last time he’d seen even part of a frankly awful movie starring female spies when he’d had to spend six hours in a bar, staking out a target. The movie was only thing that the owner had played on the scattered tv screens and after that it was bad enough Bruno couldn’t remember half of it.

“We need all the help we can get,” was the simplest explanation, and one that seemed to satisfy her. She straightened, patted down her already immaculate curls, and gave him an imperious look.

“Dick, are you coming?”

He didn’t bother rising to the bait. “Let’s go.”

Proceeding to the only door in the room that didn’t obviously lead to another cell was the work of a moment; the Baron spoke ceaselessly as they went, every thought in his head apparently spilling out of his mouth. The door itself was a solid steel construction, with hinges inward and heavy cross-banding making battering it down an excessively difficult proposition. The Baron spent several minutes inspecting it, nattering about possible traps he’d put into place on such an ordinary-looking door, before finally just trying the handle.

The thing swung open easily, revealing a room made entirely of mirrors. Floor, ceiling, walls, all of it mirrored in such a fashion as would have the tackiest nightclub drooling in envy. It was one of the gaudiest things Bruno’d seen in a while, and he silently blessed the training that had beaten the vertigo response out of him years ago as he looked down into the infinity of reflections stretching endlessly beneath them.

Blonde and Bad were still sniping at each other when he glanced over at them to see if they had an opinion on what the room actually contained, and the rush of affection that shot through his veins at the sight of Blonde was as surprising as it was strong. Bruno’s eyes snapped away as he shoved the feeling down; it was something he himself hadn’t felt in a very long time. That, combined with the reasonably graphic images that popped into his mind, was enough to verify that his avatar was trying to reassert himself.

“…And we have D, for Dick,” Blonde’s voice was almost merry as she slid a wicked glance over at Bruno’s avatar, and Bruno had to close his eyes for a few moments to push the images that statement conjured back down into something manageable as he tuned into the conversation at the worst possible time. A half-dozen responses sprang to his lips and he said none of them, opting instead of exhale slowly as he attempted to bring some kind of order back into his head. Ramsbottom - Dick Ramsbottom, because of course he was - from what he could tell of the man, was as adept as Bruno himself when it came to compartmentalization; had to be, in his line of work. He compartmentalized about everything - except Jane Blonde. Something about her upset the man’s mental boxes, and it was left to Bruno to keep things in check.

The next few minutes were spent trying to figure out a safe way through the mirror room, with Bruno’s suggestion of using the heavy metal arm attached to the Baron to break the mirrors shot down immediately by Bad himself. Who, given his remarks a few moments later, apparently thought Bruno had been hitting on him; Bruno wasn’t interested, but Ramsbottom didn’t seem to find the idea too objectionable. Apparently Ramsbottom enjoyed trying to get the somewhat oblivious Baron into a bed for some “education” when said Baron hadn’t given him a mission in a while, though if the Baron’s comments about Ramsbottom and Blonde were anything to go by he hadn’t been met with much success yet.

As the Baron began to crawl across the mirror-coated floor, Bruno was completely unsurprised when the lasers started firing. Given what he’d seen of the place so far, he’d’ve been more surprised if there hadn’t been lasers, quite frankly; the Baron didn’t seem the type to build a mirrored maze, and since most of the crazy shit in this metaverse seemed to be technology-based the more magical options were remote possibilities. As the Baron made his way across, Bruno noted some very familiar moves as the lasers were expertly dodged and sighed mentally in relief. It appeared that Crash was coming more to the fore of his avatar; a covert glance toward Blonde didn’t net him anything more than another uncomfortable fantasy, but he could hope that Andi was becoming more present as well.

Getting through the mirror room once the Baron had made them a safe path was easy enough, and the next room was only remarkable for Bruno’s avatar managing to slip out a witty one-liner in response to the Baron talking about tying up and gagging Blonde. Bruno had nearly bitten his avatar’s tongue after that’d come out, he’d closed his mouth so fast, and some determined shoving put Bruno solely in the driver’s seat. The images that accompanied the line were firmly put back into the place where Bruno did not have to think about them, though they spent a few seconds seared into the back of his eyelids.

Watching Blonde ride a shark across the room while pursued by a large number of other sharks was nerve-wracking, though her dismount onto the safety of the ledge beside both Bruno and the Baron was flawless. The next room was merely a bunch of so-called ninjas; while Bruno had never fought ninjas before, he had gone hand-to-hand with members of military organizations from around the world and the “ninjas” wielded their weapons in a style more reminiscent of East Missouri than the Far East. He ended up putting four of them down, and then the rest were taken out in one fell swoop by the Baron in a move that smacked of Crash.

It was only when Blonde started making comments about Bad and the ninjas that Ramsbottom managed to worm his way out of the bad of their shared mind and begin exerting himself again. He didn’t have much to say about the pool of acid, for which Bruno could only be grateful. The course was much similar to one they’d used to drill the recruits on back in Basic, except that instead of sandbags and waist-deep mud it was live steel blades and acid; still, it required split-second timing to get across safely and he needed all the concentration he could muster. In spite of all that, he made it across safely and popped open the door on the further wall.

And promptly closed it again; until the other two arrived, he didn’t want to have to try and deal with that many snakes alone.

Blonde crossed easily, avoiding each swinging blade adroitly, and Bruno couldn’t tear his eyes away. Ramsbottom had eyes only for Blonde, and made their shared heart beat in arrhythmia for a few seconds after the petite Blonde had landed safely on the ledge behind them. Bruno managed to keep a grip on the motor functions, at least, and answered succinctly when questioned about the contents of the room beyond. It was only the arrival of Crash and the large blade he’d apparently pulled out of the ceiling that allowed Bruno to pull their eyes away.

Itching with the need for action, and the need to get away from the outright uncomfortable at this point thoughts and feelings Ramsbottom had for Blonde that simply _refused_ to stay in the neat compartments he’d laid out for them, Bruno stepped into the room perhaps a bit more quickly than he should have. Taking point came to him as naturally as breathing after four decades of it, and in the last two rooms his own set of pilot abilities - more familiar to him now, after a number of missions - had made him the best choice to go first. In this room, however, he got maybe halfway across before there was a sudden stinging pain in his ankle and a slow crawl of fire up his leg.

Using the broom handle he’d confiscated from one of the “ninjas,” he swatted the offending reptile away and hurried to the other end of the room before lifting his pants leg examining the bite. The twin puncture wounds were still oozing blood, something he hadn’t seen in a while, but the burning sensation had stopped at his knee. Bruno shook his head and let his pants drop back into place. Apparently, the healing factor he had could deal with the poison or with injuries, but not both at the same time. He’d have to remember that in the future.

“Really? You’ll toss me up?” Bruno looked up at Blonde’s voice, the unexpected sound of it pulling him out of his contemplation of the snake bite. Unfortunately, Ramsbottom reacted just a bit quicker than Bruno could suppress the impulse to.

“I thought that was my job.” Bruno wished that biting his tongue would _actually_ make Ramsbottom stop, but his avatar seemed to only find it amusing.The middle of a mission was neither the time nor the place, but he couldn’t seem to make his avatar understand the gravity of the situation.

“Why do you got to make everything about your name, _Dick_?” Bruno couldn’t quite tell if it was the Baron or Crash asking, but he answered dryly anyway.

“I wish I knew,” he called back as he adjusted the cuffs on his sleeves. They’d come a bit undone after being soaked in the shark room and it had been bothering his avatar.

Fortunately the rest of the banter was a bit too quiet for Bruno to catch, but the sight of the Baron holding Blonde in his arms to do a short but elegant waltz was enough to ignite an ugly feeling in his avatar’s chest, one he didn’t quite recognize and didn’t like in the slightest. Baron Bad, dancing with _his_ girl - !

And then she was flying in his direction, tossed by the extraordinary strength of one Crash Jaxun and time slowed. In that moment, all Bruno Hamilton could see through his avatar’s eyes was his best girl soaring through the air towards him - Lori, as beautiful as she was elegant. In that same moment, Dick Ramsbottom saw the beautiful, dangerous, competent, and sly Jane Blonde - the woman who’d stolen his heart over the course of one meal - falling into his arms.

In a surge of overwhelming feeling that made their shared heart rise to inexplicable heights, Bruno caught Andi carefully in his arms and Dick planted a passionate kiss on the love of his life.

Bruno didn’t quite realize in time to stop it from happening, and though he struggled mightily he could only mitigate what was being done. The kiss ended swiftly, but the deep shock in the eyes of both Andi and her avatar was enough to have Bruno pushing away from reality violently and leaving Ramsbottom in charge.

As Ramsbottom came to the forefront and the sounds of Crash being violently ill faded into something that was no longer Bruno’s problem to deal with, Bruno put his metaphorical head in his metaphorical hands and struggled to get a hold on himself. When he’d been in the avatar of Lothar Kaldegga, Andi had been in the avatar of Grace Lyonns, and Kaldegga had taken spiteful satisfaction in filling their shared mind space with ever more explicit images of what exactly he’d like to do to Lyonns. While Bruno hadn’t been able to shut him out completely, it had been reasonably easy to keep their thoughts separate. He’d quashed the ones that obviously weren’t his and kept on going doggedly.

This, though, was something different; Dick Ramsbottom might be a man of particular talents more often hired for his face than his combat prowess, but he was no less methodical than Bruno was in his own way and approached every job with that same steady approach that comprised his best. Ramsbottom had gone in to the Blonde job the same fashion he always had, but something about her got through to him in a way that no other mark had managed before or since; sure, she’d roofie’d him and taken him to a secondary location before sharing the night and her mission with him, but Ramsbottom _loved_ her. He loved her for her looks, he loved her for her wits, he loved the way she moved, he loved the way she looked in the morning before she cleaned up, he loved her for the constant double entendres she made of his name.

_He loved her._

And that was what had tripped Bruno up. Bruno hadn’t felt that way about anyone since he’d held Lori in his arms and promised her the world. She’d been smart, and fierce, and beautiful, and she’d fit into his arms like she was made to be there. But he’d gone to war, to a front from where men came back heavily damaged if they came back at all, and she hadn’t been able to take the stress of knowing he might never return; her letter, arriving ten months after he’d been deployed - and dated seven months post-deployment - had outlined the reasons methodically and clearly. Whatever else could be said about her, she never gave anyone anything but straight talk and the letter had pulled no punches in that regard either.

Bruno had been drunk for a week straight, or nearly, and it was sheer luck that his unit saw no major action for that entire week. At the end of it, pulled out of his funk by one Sergeant Michael Haverly, he’d gone to the Captain and requested heavier duties. It wasn’t too long after that that Jaxun had pulled him for special duty in his unit and the rest was history. Bruno had thrown himself into the military, drowning his hurt in regulations and orders, in hard-won camaraderie and card games, and the years had slipped away almost without him noticing.

Even when he’d found out his daughter - whom he’d never known - had had a daughter, the sparkling joy that had filled his heart when he had been with Lori had been absent. Instead, he’d felt a steely resolve to do right by her, to be the family he’d wished for when his parents had died; finding her had been a mission that had consumed him for months. And when he finally did find her - save her, from Cole - he’d thought that would be that. A bullet burning in his gut and gritty sand in his eyes, it would have been worth it to see her safe.

But that hadn’t been the end of their story, and they had been far and away from safe.

When his avatar had begun to exert himself earlier, Bruno hadn’t recognized the feeling. Hadn’t recognized the the double-beat of their shared heart for what it was. He’d pushed it aside and dismissed the fantasies with as much vigor as he’d done to Kaldegga, and when his avatar hadn’t pushed back like Kaldegga had he’d eased up. His avatar’d snuck out a dirty comment or two, but so had Kaldegga and both he and Andi had agreed to never speak about it by the simple expedient of never speaking about it.

This, though…

The fact that Bruno had, for a split second, mistaken Andi for Lori disturbed him. From the first moment he’d seen Andi, the physical resemblance had been obvious; but he had put it aside in order to operate without distraction by the feelings it evoked. Feelings he hadn’t realized he’d still had; feelings very similar to the ones Ramsbottom held for Blonde.

Apparently, even after all these years, he still loved Lori.

The thought stung, the pain of the Dear John entwined deeply with it, but not nearly so much as it once had. Her second letter, the one that had set him on his current course, had gone a long way towards mitigating the injury caused by the first, and he hadn’t even realized. Not until he’d been forced to think about it by Ramsbottom.

By Ramsbottom kissing his granddaughter full on the lips.

…

_He still didn’t want to think about that._

The feeling of bullets hitting his flesh reached him where he rested at the back of their consciousness, and he jolted forward a little in their shared consciousness until he could see the fight going on around him. There was still an ongoing mission, and the other two still needed his help. From what Bruno could tell, however, Ramsbottom was doing a none-too-shabby job taking down what appeared to be some kind of Russian soldier wielding a submachine gun.

Bruno readied himself as Ramsbottom leaped forward; a mission was no time for introspection or retreat, and guns were very simple. The weight of it in his hands as he took back full control from Ramsbottom let him push all the simmering worries and revelations away to the back of his head where he could deal with them later.

A later that, for once, perhaps wasn’t ‘never.’

He fired.


End file.
